Usability Study Confirms Why the iPhone Won’t Succeed in Business

Overall, the survey respondents were happy with the interface, indicating it was more intuitive than other phones, with a shorter learning curve. But they did have issues with the phone. For one, the slow EDGE network. For another, text entry for SMS and e-mail was a problem … a death sentence, really, to any executives or business users that might be thinking of saddling their IT department with supporting the device.

“Participants uniformly found text entry SMS and e-mail to be difficult,” User Centric’s summary stated. “They were frustrated by the forced use the vertical keyboard and the lack of visibility for editing the middle of a word or sentence.” The users were also annoyed to find that horizontal text entry was only available in the Safari browser. Source: Information Week

To me, it was obvious this would be an issue as soon as I knew there was no “real” keyboard on the iPhone. This study should make those teens that say they would covet an iPhone more than a car think twice … let’s face it, most of them are bound to be heavy texters.

Additionally, since most were dissatisfied with the speed of the EDGE network, I would (as I’ve already done to my friends) recommend, if you really want this device, you wait for V2, with support for HSDPA, because, IMHO, that will be available before your 2-year contract with the V1 iPhone is up.